A murdered Connecticut woman may not be able to point out the person who killed her, but police say data obtained from her FitBit fitness tracker helped lead to the arrest of her husband. [More]
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You Can Hack A Phone Just By Using Sound Waves, Researchers Find
By 3.14.17
It sounds like wild science-fiction stuff: Play the right sequence of music through a speaker, and you can take over any device that “hears” it. And yet, a bunch of scientists have just announced that under the right circumstances, you can do exactly that thing. [More]
Fitbit Kills Off Its ‘Coin’ Payment Service; Devices To Become Useless When Batteries Die
By 2.1.17
Last year, wearable fitness tracker/fitness watch company made a surprising acquisition, buying the payment company Coin with no plan to continue its products. Instead, Fitbit planned to kill off Coin’s own product and integrate the company’s payment technology into its own wearable devices. Now the service will be shutting down next month, and Coin magnetic stripe devices will work for as long as their batteries last, or until your payment card number changes. [More]
Your Pebble’s Warranty Is Void Now, Even If It’s New
By 12.8.16
The way that smart watch company Pebble is going out of business isn’t what we’re used to seeing: instead of officially filing for bankruptcy first or being fully acquired by another firm, Pebble sold only its software assets to Fitbit. The end of Pebble as a company means that the warranties on its devices are now done, too: even new devices that you might have just purchased. [More]
Fitbit Buying Smartwatch Maker Pebble’s Software, Hiring Engineers
By 12.7.16 — Updated: 12.8.16
Smartwatches and other wearables just haven’t caught on as much as the electronics industry assumed that they would. Pebble — a smartwatch company most famous for pre-selling its products on Kickstarter only to then make sure that Best Buy shoppers got their orders first — has confirmed that it is shutting down and selling off its various assets. You can now count Fitbit among the scavengers picking at Pebble’s bones. [More]
Fitbit Introduced New Models This Fall, And Nobody Wants Them
By 11.3.16
Fitbit introduced a few new products earlier this year, including a slim swim-proof tracker and an update to its popular Charge model. Only product-watchers saw that the Charge was piling up on store shelves, and the swim-proof tracker, the Flex 2, was in short supply. Now Fitbit predicts that its sales will be way down this holiday season. [More]
Judge Clears Fitbit Of Allegations That It Stole Trade Secrets From Rival Jawbone
By 8.24.16
The fight between rival fitness tracker companies Fitbit and Jawbone may finally be put to rest, after a judge cleared the former of stealing trade secrets from the latter. [More]
Fitbit Must Face Lawsuit Over Sleep-Tracking Claims
By 7.19.16
Marketing for a number of Fitbit wearable fitness trackers claims that these devices can “monitor your sleep trends,” but now the company must face a class-action lawsuit alleging that Fitbits do nothing of the sort. [More]
Alibaba And Fitbit Hold A ‘Super Brand Day’ Exercise Party To Celebrate New Fitbits
By 5.18.16
Alibaba and famous brand names do not historically have a great relationship. Just earlier this week, the e-commerce company was suspended from an international anti-counterfeiting coalition and its CEO withdrew as keynote speaker at the group’s conference later this month. The company is trying, though, and today had a Super Brand Day on the company’s Tmall e-commerce site. [More]
Fitbit Looks To Turn Its Fitness Trackers Into Wearable Digital Wallets
By 5.18.16
When most of us think of wearable fitness trackers, Fitbit is probably the brand that comes to mind, but the growing popularity of multitasking smartwatches from Apple, Samsung and others means Fitbit is eventually going to need to offer more than just health data. So it comes as little surprise that the company is looking toward the future by acquiring mobile payment technology. [More]
Amazon Teams Up With Fitbit, Makes Alexa A Fitness Guru
By 3.17.16
Amazon Echo’s personal assistant, Alexa, can serve as your financial advisor by paying your Capital One bill, your personal chef by ordering Dominos, and now she can act as your personal trainer. The smart speaker now works with health tracking company Fitbit to provide users with details about their daily fitness routine. [More]
Oral Roberts University Students Now Required To Wear Fitbits All The Time For A Grade
By 2.2.16
You might associate Oral Roberts University with students who are very strong in their Christian faith, but the Oklahoma college also puts a priority on students’ physical fitness. That’s why they’re the first U.S. college known to require all students to wear fitness tracking devices and reach a minimum step goal every day. [More]
Consumer Reports Checks Fitbit Heart Rate Monitors Again
By 1.22.16
Earlier this month, a lawsuit from several Fitbit tracking watch owners made the news. In it, three users claimed that the heart rate monitors are inaccurate, and that customers had been misled. Yet our pulse-monitoring colleagues down the hall at Consumer Reports had just tested the same products, and didn’t notice any problems with their heart rate monitoring ability. Had they missed something? They decided to check. [More]
Got A Fitbit Or Other Gadget For Christmas? It’s Time To Opt Out Of Mandatory Arbitration!
By 1.6.16
Customers have filed a class action suit against Fitbit, claiming that the company’s Charge HR and Surge fitness bands don’t accurately measure users’ heart rate during vigorous exercise. We’ll keep an eye on the lawsuit and let you know if it goes anywhere, but it probably won’t, and that’s what got our attention. The users filed a class action against Fitbit despite signing (well, clicking) away their right to do so when they registered their devices. [More]
ID Thieves Hijacking Accounts To Cash In On Bogus Warranties
By 1.6.16
In a pre-online era, when we made most purchases in person, getting a warranty replacement on a broken product often required taking the defective item back to where you bought it. But now that we’re all buying things online, a number of retailers are willing to ship you a replacement on the understanding that you’ll immediately return the original item. ID thieves are taking advantage of this goodwill, hijacking customers’ accounts and convincing companies to send them free replacements for items they never bought. [More]
Fitbit Announces New ‘Smart Fitness Watch,’ Still Not A Smart Watch
By 1.5.16
Fitbit isn’t a watch company: they’re a fitness tracker company. They’re sticking to this concept, even as smartwatches that can track your steps, flights of stairs climbed, and heart rate as well as let you read your e-mail have hit the market, and some people are actually buying them. Today, Fitbit announced its newest product: an even more watch-like fitness tracker called the Blaze. [More]
Fitbit Charge Users Report Worse Battery Life After Firmware Upgrade
By 12.29.15
Usually, a firmware update makes a gadget better, not worse. That’s not what users of the Fitbit Charge HR are experiencing after the device’s most recent firmware update, though. They report that their devices will only stay charged for anywhere between three days and a few hours, when the battery lasted longer before the update. [More]
Pharmaceutical Companies Using Fitness Trackers To Collect Data On Drug Trials, Other Research
By 9.14.15
Consumers looking to improve their health have turned to fitness trackers like Fitbit, Jawbone, Vivofit, and Fuse that record the user’s heart rate, calories burned, steps walked, and other pertinent data. These devices are also increasingly being used for another purpose: tracking the effectiveness of new medications in drug trials and other research for pharmaceutical companies. [More]
